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Once sailor, forever sailor

Thursday, March 3, 2016

An Indian naval vessel near
Visakhapatnam last month. India has not, to date, shown interest in
carrying out joint patrols with the United States, even under the more
neutral auspices of counterpiracy operations.Credit
Saurabh Das/Associated Press

NEW
DELHI — The chief of the United States Pacific Command, Adm. Harry B.
Harris Jr., on Wednesday proposed reviving an informal strategic
coalition made up of the navies of Japan, Australia, India and the United States, an experiment that collapsed a decade ago because of diplomatic protests from China.

The
proposal was the latest in a series of United States overtures to
India, a country wary of forming strategic alliances, to become part of a
network of naval powers that would balance China’s maritime expansion.

The
American ambassador to India, Richard R. Verma, expressed hope in a
speech that “in the not-too-distant future,” joint patrols by navy
vessels from India and the United States “will become a common and
welcome sight throughout Indo-Pacific waters.”

Though
he did not specifically mention China on Wednesday, Admiral Harris said
powerful countries were seeking to “bully smaller nations through
intimidation and coercion,” and made the case that a broad naval
collaboration was the best way to avert it.

“Exercising
together will lead to operating together,” he said, before meetings
with his Indian counterpart. “By being ambitious, India, Japan,
Australia and the United States and so many like-minded nations can
aspire to operate anywhere in the high seas and the airspace above it.”

Since Prime Minister Narendra Modi
took office, India has ramped up naval cooperation with the United
States. It reacted angrily in 2014 when a Chinese People’s Liberation
Army submarine docked in the Sri Lankan port of Colombo, and has warily
watched the expansion of one of President Xi Jinping’s
priority projects, a maritime “silk road” with major ports in Gwadar,
Pakistan, and Chittagong, Bangladesh. When President Obama visited India
last year, the two countries issued a joint statement on “the
Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean region,” something India had refused to do
in the past.

Still,
some of the American proposals smack of wishful thinking. India has
not, to date, shown interest in carrying out joint patrols with the
United States, even under the more neutral auspices of counterpiracy
operations.

Officials here rebutted a Reuters report
last month in which a United States official suggested India might
participate in joint patrols in the South China Sea, something not even
treaty allies like Australia or Japan have agreed to.

“The
last thing India wants to do is accidentally make itself into a
front-line player in the South China Sea,” said Nitin A. Gokhale, a
security analyst, adding that “the best U.S.-aligned players can expect”
is for India to remain active in regional forums, and shore up smaller
navies like those of Vietnam and the Philippines.

“I don’t think India will be a front-line state,” he said.

Admiral
Harris’s proposal of a quadrilateral security grouping, given at a
forum hosted by the Observer Research Foundation, is certain to capture
Beijing’s attention. It did the same in 2007, when Prime Minister Shinzo
Abe of Japan introduced the idea.

But
Chinese analysts viewed the grouping as hostile; one called it a
“mini-NATO.” Even before the four countries convened for their first
joint meeting, China had sent formal diplomatic protests to Washington,
New Delhi, Canberra and Tokyo. At a summit meeting with China less than
two years later, Australia announced that it was withdrawing from the
quadrilateral arrangement.

Under
Mr. Modi, India’s navy has embarked on the creation of a web of
bilateral and trilateral agreements, which serve the same purpose but
are less likely to be “caricatured” by China as a containment strategy,
said Rory Medcalf, the head of the National Security College at the
Australian National University. He added, however, that growing
cooperation with the United States had forced China to take India more
seriously.

Shen
Dingli, a professor of international relations at Fudan University in
Shanghai, dismissed the idea that the grouping could be revived, and
said that India would not join such a network for fear of Chinese
retaliation.

“China
actually has many ways to hurt India,” he said. “China could send an
aircraft carrier to the Gwadar port in Pakistan. China had turned down
the Pakistan offer to have military stationed in the country. If India
forces China to do that, of course we can put a navy at your doorstep.”